1
“there’s a light burning in your studio,” she said as they turned the corner. they had been silent all the way, phyllis happy to be out in the moonlight, and felix rather moodily uneasy at this prolongation of an incident that had already had its due ending.
“yes, rose-ann is still up,” he said.
he unlocked the door, and phyllis ran in eagerly. rose-ann sprang up from the table where she had been working over some magazine proofs.
“phyllis!” she cried, and the two girls embraced like old friends long parted.
“i’ve been keeping felix up, listening to the story of my life,” said phyllis.
“is it late? i’ve been fixing up the dummy of the motion picture world. i’m just finished. i have to get it down at the printer’s at eight in the morning.” she went over to the table, and swept the scattered proofs into a portfolio, laying the dummy upon them, and tying the strings. “how about some coffee? or are you sleepy?” “wide awake!” said phyllis. “it’s so nice to find you up. i did want to see your studio.”
“felix, will you make some coffee?”
felix came back in a moment and sadly reported that the coffee was “all gone!”
“oh, i forgot—i used the last of it this evening.... what a pity!”
felix, returning into their presence from behind the screen, had a curious sense of being a third, an intruder into a friendly intimacy. he had had, in the very moment of their meeting, a startled impression of their being the oldest friends each other had, far more deeply acquainted 293with each other than he with either of them! and now, in the mere two minutes in which he had been out of their sight searching for coffee, they had begun to talk for all the world like two old schoolmates who had, after a long separation, much to tell each other. his entrance had, or so it seemed to him, the effect of an interruption.
“i’ll look again,” he said awkwardly. “there may be some left of that g. washington coffee. i think there is.” and he went behind the screen again.
there was no “g. washington coffee.” he found the empty can at once. but he sat down on the bed, grinning sheepishly at himself, instead of returning. he could hear them out there talking in the swift, breathless, low tones of confidential feminine narrative. now phyllis’s voice ceased on a note of inquiry, and rose-ann spoke without interruption to a hushed listener. her voice became louder, and there was a ring of pride in it. both girls suddenly laughed and then rose-ann went on talking....
what on earth could they be talking about? felix found himself listening curiously, with decidedly the feeling of an eavesdropper, but he could distinguish only an unrevealing word or two now and then. “clive’s house,” he heard, and after a while, “scissors,” followed by another laugh; but that was all.
if someone had assured him, beforehand, that rose-ann, in spite of what had seemed to him an ungenerous hostility to phyllis, would have instantly taken her to her bosom like this, he would have been pleased; but now, with that fact before him, he was not so much pleased as astonished. he was even a little annoyed.
why should he be annoyed? it was doubtless natural enough for these two girls to want to talk together. phyllis’s having been at rose-ann’s wedding constituted a bond between them.... and felix remembered that when they had first met they had seemed to like each other at once. he was behaving rather ridiculously in staying out here; they could talk just as well in his presence.
he returned to them and again reported failure. and 294once more, as he entered, he had the feeling of being an intruder. this time it was as if they had forgotten his existence, and were rather startled to find him there, and puzzled for a moment to know how to get rid of him!
“oh!” said rose-ann to his news of the total absence of any coffee whatever.
“i’ve some coffee over at my place,” said phyllis. “won’t you come over there? i’d like to show you my room. and we can talk.”
distinctly her glance at him told felix that he was not wanted along.
rose-ann jumped up. “let’s!” she said. and then to felix, “you needn’t bother to come with us. phyllis and i want to talk.”
“all right!” he said, smiling. but as he saw them depart together out of the door of the studio into the moonlight, he had an odd feeling of being a little boy left out of the conversation of his elders.... and perhaps, too, there was a strange feeling of jealous unease.
2
he took a book, went to bed, and tried to read himself to sleep. but at six o’clock he was still awake, and rose-ann had not returned. at seven he rose, and went—well, perhaps not exactly to look for her, but to his work-room.
through the inner door he could hear their voices, in animated conversation. he went to the door, flung it open, and cried,
“my god, are you girls still talking!”
they looked up, startled, and then laughed. “what time is it?” asked rose-ann. “i’ve been telling phyllis the history of our marriage....”
so that was what they were talking about! half-appeased, at having been after all included in the conversation, he looked at his watch. “seven-thirty,” he said.
“i have to have my dummy at the printer’s at eight,” said rose-ann. “i wonder if you will take it there for 295me, felix, while i take a bath. and we’ll all meet at breakfast. clive and phyllis are going to have breakfast at henrici’s, and we’ll join them. will you?”
felix went back to the studio for the dummy. as he went, he carried in his mind the picture he had seen when he opened the door of phyllis’s room—phyllis sitting on the floor at rose-ann’s feet precisely as a few hours earlier she had sat at his, with what must have been the same worshipful expression on her face as she listened to rose-ann’s words. rose-ann had also probably been deciding her young destinies for her.
felix laughed. it was certainly odd enough!
yes, but what ideas had rose-ann been putting into her head? what kind of story had rose-ann told her about their marriage? had rose-ann talked about their mutual “freedom”? that theme would have accounted for phyllis’s rapt and devout attention. it was what phyllis wanted to hear, what she wanted to believe—that love could be like that!
anyway, he was glad that phyllis and rose-ann were friends.
3
the four of them breakfasted together at henrici’s, and at noon phyllis was inducted into the magic circle of their mid-day comradeship at the corner table in the little hungarian restaurant; and that afternoon they took the train for woods point—whither phyllis had to go as it were in disguise, or at least stealthily, for her family must not know that she was spending the night at clive’s: an ironic precaution, for their relations were still as vexatiously and chastely intellectual as they had been in the earliest days of their clandestine meetings.
in spite of their need of sleep—and fortified by the thought that tomorrow was sunday and they could sleep as long as they liked—they sat up until all hours, talking. it was like a reunion, and the memory of their first meeting here touched it with romantic suggestion. the promise 296of comradeship which had been implicit in that first meeting, obscured at the time by the anxieties and discomforts of a tribal ceremonial, had now, after so long an interval, come true. they felt that they had discovered each other, to a new extent, in this new grouping. it is not often that two couples can happily coalesce into that infinitely fluid and various arrangement, a group of four. but it had quite unmistakably and thrillingly happened!
